


Blown Out

by PeridotWritesFic



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Lucid Dreaming, Other, Recurring Dream, Song fic, Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-01
Updated: 2020-03-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:07:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22963648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PeridotWritesFic/pseuds/PeridotWritesFic
Summary: Draco had important plans for his life, until none of his plans mattered anymore. And what is that pounding?
Kudos: 2





	Blown Out

**Author's Note:**

> Fic loosely based on the song Cosmic Love by Florence and the Machine. Familiarity with the song is not necessary to enjoy this fic

Draco had always had important plans for his life, even if they had begun as his father’s plans. Lucius Malfoy had planned for Draco to do well in school, learn to manage the Malfoy estate and reputation, marry a suitable pure-blood witch and sire an heir for the bloodline. Draco had planned to build popularity and cement the support of his powerful peers in Hogwarts, wield influence in the ministry, and maybe own a quidditch team in one of the better known leagues to indulge his interest in the sport. 

Then the Dark Lord had returned and everything had gone tits-up. Lucius planned to appease his lord and rebuild his power among the ranks of Death Eaters. Draco had simply planned to survive, for himself and his family. Nothing else mattered. Well, almost nothing.

And here he was, Draco had succeeded and his father had failed. The Malfoys had come out on the losing side of the most violent confrontation in recent wizarding history, the Dark Lord defeated at the hands of a teenager, but the Malfoys survived. Survived, only to face the consequences of their loss.

Draco sat, chained to his chair before the Wizengamot for his trial, for once without a plan and likely, he thought to himself, without a future. He had no idea if his parents’ trials had already been concluded or, if they had, what sentence they faced. Draco was less than chuffed about any of their prospects. 

At worse, he and his parents would all receive the Dementor’s kiss for their involvement in a war larger than any of their individual crimes. At best… Draco suppressed a sigh, he would not show that kind of weakness, even here. At best, he thought, they’d be restricted, their power and name destroyed, and left to pick up the pieces in a world that despised them.

He had tuned out most of the proceedings, his input was minimal, simply waiting for a verdict. Draco was sure he’d schooled his features into a perfectly bland expression thanks to years of pureblood etiquette training. In fact he felt nothing but resignation…

Until Potter looked directly at him, green eyes focused on grey. Then The-Boy-Who-Lived rose, not looking away, and testified for Draco Malfoy. Not against, for. 

Draco was shocked for a moment, but just a moment, and he’d never let it show. But the moment after, heat exploded in his head and spread through his body. It was all Draco could do not to scream, though his throat clenched and ached as if he were. And still, green eyes were locked on grey and Draco could not look away, couldn’t see or think of anything else, just calm green eyes and searing heat and pain.

“Pardoned.” He heard the word but didn’t process it, even as his manacles and chains released him and those perfect green eyes finally looked away. Draco didn’t feel or see or understand anything while his body mechanically stood and moved towards the door. He was fully pardoned on all charges, no magical restrictions, no probationary period, no monetary reparations, he was free. 

But Draco was blind to everything but those green eyes, even as Potter handed him back his wand…

That night, he dreamed of complete darkness. It was preferable, in a way, to the nightmares he’d endured before. Or, it would be, if it weren’t for the damned rhythmic pounding he couldn’t locate. And the pounding, it was familiar and not, he HAD to find it. Draco woke with the first emotion he’d felt since the trial, irritation.

Life continued in that vein for months. Draco stayed at Malfoy Manor, a place that should be filled with too many memories of childhood love and adolescent horror to bear, and felt nothing. He barely spoke or ate, doing only the bare minimum to survive, and at night he dreamed the same dream of darkness and pounding. After a while, Draco decided the noise was no longer pounding, but a beating, like a muted drum. 

Nothing changed, Lucius may be doing a stint in Azkaban and Narcissa may be home, though on probation with an Auror shadowing her, but Draco hardly noticed. And it remained so, even in the weeks following Lucius’ release and subsequent return home. Even when a year had passed and Narcissa was finished with her probation, Draco’s days and nights remained exactly the same. 

The dream was what finally changed. Mid-dream, Draco searching aggravatedly for the source of the sodding rhythmic beating, it stopped. Dream Draco stopped, and waited. Of course the sound would come back. It had to come back. How else would he find out what was making that sound?

He woke up still waiting. Draco almost didn’t dare to breath, still hoping awake that the sound might come back, but it didn’t. Not that day. Not that night in his dream, nor any subsequent day or night that week. His nightly dream was silent darkness.

The silence finally forced him to listen and, to his surprise, find that his mother had been trying to talk to him for over a year and get him to see a mind healer. The darkness made him try to see, and he saw his father, looking as hollow and blank as he felt. He saw Narcissa’s journal where she’d left it beside her chair in the conservatory. Draco saw the words she used to describe him and his father, “like the moon and the stars have been blown out.” 

Draco went to a mind healer, a witch who looked much like Granger, but with Pansy’s knowing gaze. The gaze made him stay and talk about his life, his trial, his dream. As he listened to himself, he realized how appropriate his mother’s words had been, after all, he was named after a constellation.   
When he slept the night after his first session with the mind healer, Draco dreamed of silent darkness. And for the first time in well over a year, moisture welled in his eyes until it ran over and spilled down his cheeks. Draco Malfoy cried in the vast emptiness of his dream. Silent tears gave way to wracking sobs which eventually subsided into shuddering breaths and hiccuping. Draco woke with damp cheeks and a soggy pillow.

Several sessions with his mind healer later, he was finally beginning to think of her that way, the witch suggested lucid dreaming. It seemed simple enough when she’d explained it to him, although the charm to make it work was almost as complicated as doing it ‘the muggle way’. Still, it was better than doing nothing, so Draco set about learning the charm.

Draco perfected the charm for lucid dreaming, somnium lucidus a week later and was pleased enough with his success to twitch his lips upwards into an almost smile. His dream still began the same, but this time, as he was crying, he saw that his fallen tears froze and sparkled with light. Light, the first light in his dreams in so long. The tear-gems were faint individually, but he’d been crying in his dreams for three months. Cumulatively, they shone, so Draco set to work spreading them out to get a view of his dreamscape, and maybe find a way out.

Draco’s mind healer, he’d finally learned her name, Emmeline, was pleased with his progress, though he himself still felt like the most important thing was missing. Emmeline had tried to soothe him, reminding him that there were still many things missing in his life; a career, companionship, recreation, and that those things would take time. That his progress should not be measured against how much he had yet to accomplish. But Draco still felt oddly restless.

For the first time, he decided to walk part of the way home, instead of apparating away immediately from his appointment. He had forgotten what it was like to be among so many people, witches and wizards talking and moving and going about their lives in a way he’d been unable to. Though the street outside Emmeline’s office was hardly crowded, it was still almost overwhelming to Draco. 

He caught his breath when a wizard brushed past him, the stranger bumping his shoulder into Draco’s upper arm. Draco forgot what to say or how to respond, a feeling of warmth spreading through him from the point of contact as he turned and watched the wizard hurry away, right into the building Draco had just left. 

That night, Draco finished lighting up his dream with his star-like tears. The constellations he had made turned what had been a deep blackness nothing but a placid starry night. And then he heard it. The rhythmic beating began again, beating in sync with heat that throbbed where the wizard had bumped into him earlier. 

And Draco saw him, in overlapping outlines. Green eyes and a lightning scar wavering under a glamor of the wizard he’d bumped into. Green eyes that were crying inky black tears. Draco knew, seeing those tears, that he couldn’t leave. He couldn’t leave Potter or the beating or the dark. He gathered up his teary stars and extinguished them, approaching the green eyed man in the darkness. 

In the dark, Draco embraced Harry, and found the source of the pounding. The sound was Harry’s heartbeat.


End file.
